Fort Vancouver Mobile project to begin soon

After many months of preparation, the Fort Vancouver Mobile project finally is ready for its first round of public circulation. This locative / mixed media effort brings together a core team of 20 scholars, digital storytellers, new media producers, historians and archaeologists to create location-aware nonfiction content at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. The site was the early end of the Oregon Trail, the regional headquarters of the British Hudson's Bay Company's 700,000-square-mile fur empire and the first U.S. Army post in the Northwest, home to such military leaders as Ulysses S. Grant, George C. Marshall and O.O. Howard. The fort has more than 2 million artifacts in its collection, but most of those are kept in warehouses, unavailable to the site's 1 million annual visitors. Besides the archaeological items, gathered from more than 50 years of excavations, boxes of documents, drawings and assorted historical records also help to reveal the fascinating and multicultural history of the place, once dubbed the "New York of the Pacific." This project will use mobile technology to not only bring that information out of storage but also to use that information to create an immersive and interactive environment for visitors. The proof-of-concept stage is being funded by an $8,900 grant from the Clark County Commissioners and the Historical Promotion Grant program. A behind-the-scenes look at the project is being offered here: www.FortVancouverMobile.net, with content packages eventually being delivered via the companion site (not yet ready for public consumption), www.FortVancouverMobile.com.

Let me know what you think about the project as we develop it. And if you find any broken links on this page. Thanks!

Statistics

"Smartphones" to overtake "feature" phones in the cellular market by 2011

"The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of respondents to a Nielsen survey indicated that their next device will be a smartphone."

Cell phone use rises rapidly in the U.S., in minutes, texts, data

"In particular, wireless data service revenues increased 25.7% from the last half of 2008 to reach more than $22 billion for the last half of 2009. Wireless data revenues, which represent what consumers spend on non-voice services, were more than 28% of all wireless service revenues. In addition, there are now more than 257 million data-capable devices in consumers’ hands, up from 228 million at the end of 2008. 50 million of these devices are smart phones or wireless-enabled PDAs."

Many in the world are getting initial exposure to Internet through mobile devices

There are about 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions among the planet's 6.8 billion people today." ... "For the majority of the world's people, their first and only access to the Internet will be through a mobile device - not a PC. And this access is spreading very, very fast."

About 24 million Americans using smartphones now, up 159 percent in a year

"(The smartphone industry) showed a significant 159-percent growth rate during the past year to 23.8 million users in August 2009. The growth in touchscreen device adoption substantially outpaced the already strong 63-percent growth in U.S. adoption of smartphones. ... The Apple iPhone ranked as the top touchscreen device family with 32.9 percent of touchscreen device users age 13 and older, nearly four times larger than the market share of the next largest device family, the LG Dare (8.7 percent). LG Voyager ranked third with 7.8 percent of the market, followed by the Blackberry Storm (7.0 percent) and Palm Treo (6.5 percent). "

Potential is 'immense' for mobile data sharing and Internet access

There are nearly 4 billion mobile subscribers (in the world, at year end 2009), but only 260
million of them on 3G networks, or about 7 percent penetration, indicating immense potential demand for the mobile Internet.

More than 2 billion mobile phones, compared to 305 million desktop computers

"There are 2.2 billion mobile phones in the developing world, 305 million computers but only 11 million hospital beds," said Terry Kramer, strategy director at British operator Vodafone at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona" in February 2009 in this ReadWriteWeb piece published about the desire to use mobile phones to improve healthcare in the developing world.

Accessibility to phones is high, among all levels of income

In low-income countries, Internet subscribers per 100 people grew only from 0.1 to 0.8 in data gathered from 2000 to 2007. According to The World Bank's Little Data Book on Information and Communication Technologies, though, mobile cellular subscriptions over that same time period grew from 0.3 to 21.5 per 100 people.

Mobile applications predicted to soar in fields of entertainment and information

(By 2012), about $8 billion in revenue is projected to be generated by mobile applications just in the entertainment fields of video games, music, television and news / information. And roughly 20 percent of wireless revenues (in 2007) already come from mobile data.

Recent examples of mobile storytelling

Early adopters in various places are experimenting with location-awareness technology and its storytelling potential. Some of these pieces have to be experienced at the specific location to be fully appreciated, which is the area I'm most interested in studying. But some are built to be accessed remotely as well. For the sake of variety, not necessarily quality, I will list them as I find them:

"Murder at Harvard" -- "Site-based mobile version of the documentary film 'Murder at Harvard,' directed and produced by Boston local Eric Stange. This mobile audio and video self-guided walk lets you uncover the mystery and allure of the “OJ Simpson Trial of 1849.” (2010)

"City of Memory" -- "An online community map of personal stories and memories organized on a physical geographical map of New York City." (2009)

"BagLady 2.0" -- "A customized electronic tool for live performance and the collection of signs, a bag with an antenna and an embedded board, programmed for live wireless broadcasting on the fly - of digital sound and images.
It probes found wifi zones as a platform to pipe through this data." (2009)

HighRise -- More transmedia than strictly mobile, but this is a gorgeous and fascinating project that could inform the field (2009).

"CellStories" -- A daily story delivered to your mobile device ... and only mobile devices (2009).

"Parallel Kingdom" -- "A mobile role playing and strategy game that places the virtual world on top of the real world using the GPS inside your phone. Attack, chat and interact with your friends and anyone else around you." (2009)

"Social Tapestries" -- "A research program exploring the potential benefits and costs of local knowledge mapping and sharing, what we have termed the public authoring of social knowledge." Related to Urban Tapestries. (2009)

"23rd and Union" -- More locative than mobile but with aspects that could inform the field; stories about a particularly interesting street corner in Seattle (2009).

"Neighborhood Narratives" -- "Invites students to examine the city as a virtual and mixed reality space and investigates the complex means by which cell phones, GPS, mobile recording devices and social network games affect their knowledge of and relation to lived space." (2008)

Examples within genres

Mobile storytelling categorized by broad ways in which the technology is used, as genres of sorts.

Interactive nonfiction

"Murder at Harvard" -- "Site-based mobile version of the documentary film 'Murder at Harvard,' directed and produced by Boston local Eric Stange. This mobile audio and video self-guided walk lets you uncover the mystery and allure of the “OJ Simpson Trial of 1849.” (2010)

"City of Memory" -- "An online community map of personal stories and memories organized on a physical geographical map of New York City." (2009)

"Toward the Sentient City" -- The Architectural League commissioned several new mobile works that explore ambient, mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies. (2009)

"HighRise" -- More transmedia than strictly mobile, but this is a gorgeous and fascinating project that could inform the field. (2009)

"23rd and Union" -- More locative than mobile but with aspects that could inform the field, too; stories about a particularly interesting street corner in Seattle. (2009)

"Social Tapestries" -- "A research program exploring the potential benefits and costs of local knowledge mapping and sharing, what we have termed the public authoring of social knowledge." Related to Urban Tapestries. (2009)

"BagLady 2.0" -- "A customized electronic tool for live performance and the collection of signs, a bag with an antenna and an embedded board, programmed for live wireless broadcasting on the fly - of digital sound and images.
It probes found wifi zones as a platform to pipe through this data." (2009)

"Neighborhood Narratives" -- "Invites students to examine the city as a virtual and mixed reality space and investigates the complex means by which cell phones, GPS, mobile recording devices and social network games affect their knowledge of and relation to lived space." (2008)

"Biomapping" -- "In structured workshops, participants re-explore their local area with the use of a unique device invented by Christian Nold which records the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location." (2004)

"Yellow Arrow" -- "A global public art project of local experiences. Combining stickers, mobile phones and an international community, Yellow Arrow transforms the urban landscape into a 'deep map' that expresses the personal histories and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces." (2004)

"Parallel Kingdom" -- "A mobile role playing and strategy game that places the virtual world on top of the real world using the GPS inside your phone. Attack, chat and interact with your friends and anyone else around you." (2009)

"Plundr" -- "A location-based game of piracy and trading on the high seas created by area/code. Start out as a bilge-spewing land-lubber in a leaky tub, search the ocean for unsuspecting ships to pillage, upgrade your ship, and amass a fortune in black market goods." Built for laptops. (2007)

"Tracking Agama" -- A game played with a cell phone -- incorporating blogs, voice mail and text messages -- that takes place in and around downtown Los Angeles. (2006)

"Savannah" -- "A strategy-based adventure game where a virtual space is mapped directly onto a real space. Children 'play' at being lions in a savannah, navigating the augmented environments with a mobile hand-held device." (2005)

"The Journey" -- An "adventure game experience for your mobile phone. You are in the role of an infamous detective and have to solve a mysterious case not only by making it through the story, but also by walking to different locations." (2004)

A picture-based navigation app for the G1. Allows users to create and share routes.

My comments: When a pre-set waypoint was reached, it shook the phone and played an audio file, saying such things as "Go left." That kind of triggering of audio by GPS coordinates could be really useful in a story. Also, it linked photos to specific places.

"We are interested in designing not just the architectural space in which people move and behave and interact but also the interaction spaces for information and services which they discover and use and which support their movements, behaviors and interactions within architectural space."

My comments: Several project examples shown on this organization's site here.

"Users can download the app via WiFi or the 3G network, select their location and start building GPS-directed itineraries that provide point-to-point instructions and on-site educational and organizational information."

My comments: Company representative said will be on App Store by the end of January. Seems promising.

"A fashion company based in London that designs interactive clothing. CuteCircuit products are innovative intelligent clothing that integrate new functionalities into fashion through the use of smart textiles and micro electronics."

My comments: These folks are working on some fascinating projects that go beyond the cellular phone in terms of mobile communication and interaction, such as embedded theater.

"Develops software products for systems driven by visual interaction in both real and virtual worlds. Our Unifeye software platform not only lets you place 3D animations directly into live video streams, but also supports the seamless integration of images from the external user environment."

My comments: The augmented reality platform system "Junaio" looks really great in the demos, but I had a difficult time getting it to do anything meaningful, at least in its original form.

Booyah Inc's "GPS game about buying and owning your favorite local shops, restaurants, and hangouts on your iPhone. First, 'Check-In' at real-world locations to unlock rewards. Then buy and own your favorite real-life places. During the day, you can collect rent when people 'Check-In' to your shops. The more visitors that come to your stores, the more it raises your properties' total value."

Records a route by GPS, tracking time, speed, distance and elevation for the G1. Can add photos to waypoints.

My comments: While this might work well for hiking and biking, and meeting friends on the trail, all of which the program was designed for, it has limited storytelling possibilities. More oriented toward gathering statistics.

Can embed information about specific places in GPS locations, although only a short amount of text.

My comments: Had really high hopes for this one, but the camera view is unusable (at least on my campus) due to GPS location issues; satellite view and map views offers some hope, I suppose, for improvements in the future.

Conferences and training

"The first global conference dedicated to advancing the business of augmented reality ... start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to focus on evolving the much hyped technology into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium."

2009

"A mobile and multimedia game designed for History education was analyzed in terms of how it is designed and how it was applied as a narrative learning environment. In History education, narrative can be argued to be very useful to overcome fragmentation of the knowledge of historical characters and events, by relating these with meaningful connections of temporality and sequence (storification). In the game studied, students explore the history of Amsterdam by walking in the city, experiencing characters, buildings, and events, while using UMTS/GPS phones for communication and exchange of information."

"This paper describes the problems that had to be faced
during the elaboration of an interactive narrative for the Instory project (http://img.di.fct.unl.pt/InStory/) directed by
Prof. Nuno Correia. The project had the goal of defining and implementing a platform for mobile and cinematic storytelling, information access, and gaming activities, in Quinta da Regaleira (World Heritage) in Sintra, Portugal. The system is driven and validated by a set of fictional
threads that are centered on the exploration of physical spaces (the real world, in real time). The development of a narrative was naturally constrained by the environment which raised some practical and theoretical issues in what regards the
literary strategies involved."

"Mobile imaging and digital storytelling currently support a growing practice of multimedia communication in the West. In this paper we describe a project which explores their benefit in the East, to support non-textual information sharing in an Indian village. Local audiovisual story creation and sharing activities were carried out in a one month trial, using 10 customized cameraphones and a digital library of stories represented on a village display. The findings show that the system was usable by a cross-section of the community and valued for its ability to express a mixture of development and community information in an accessible form. Lessons for the role of HCI in this context are also discussed."

Integration of wireless and mobile technologies on college and university campuses has steadily risen over the past seven years. The 2002 Gartner DataQuest’s campus computer survey reports that “70 percent of U.S. college campuses had some local area wireless network coverage, while 10 percent had full campus coverage” (Akin, 2003, p. 91). In addition, Comscore Networks claims that “10 million Americans surf [the Web] from cell phones and PDAs” (Ellison, 2003, p. 64). In the fall of 2001, the University of South Dakota required all entering students to purchase a Palm PDA (Akin, 2003, p. 92). Experts in mobile technologies predict that handheld devices like PDAs will become as ubiquitous in workplaces and college campuses as the desktop computer (Weiser, 1998; Chen, 1999). This migration to wireless and mobile technologies means a shift in the pedagogical and curricular spaces typically reserved for writing instruction. Going Wireless offers a mix of practical and theoretical insights on wireless and mobile technologies to rhetoric and composition teachers, scholars, and administrators.

"In order to address the potential of mobile media as new media, I will begin by discussing some aspects of what it means to be 'mobile' in a period of globalization. I will then discuss South Korea as one of the major global leaders in mobile technologies, contextualising the socio-cultural dimensions of its techno-nationalist policy. I will then turn to the South Korean 'mobile hacker' project, called Dotplay, conducted by INP. I argue that through this type of hactivist project we can begin to reflect the art of being immobile and mobile in an age of global UCC 'flows.'"

Web 2.0, specifically The Cloud, GeoWeb and Wikitecture are revolutionizing the way in which we present, share and analyze geographic data. In this paper we outline and provide working examples a suite of tools which are detailed below, aimed at developing new applications of GIS and related technologies. GeoVUE is one of seven nodes in the National Centre for e-Social Science whose mission it is to develop web-based technologies for the social and geographical sciences. The Node, based at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London has developed a suite of free software allowing quick and easy visualization of geographic data in systems such as Google Maps, Google Earth, Crysis and Second Life. These tools address two issues, firstly that spatial data is still inherently difficult to share and visualize for the non-GIS trained academic or professional and secondly that a geographic data social network has the potential to dramatically open up data sources for both the public and professional geographer. With our applications of GMap Creator, and MapTube to name but two, we detail ways to intelligently visualize and share spatial data. This paper concludes with detailing usage and outreach as well as an insight into how such tools are already providing a significant impact to the outreach of geographic information.

“'Mobile tourism' represents a relatively new trend in the field of tourism and involves the use of mobile devices as electronic tourist guides. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are still open challenges with respect to design, usability, portability, functionality and implementation aspects. Most existing “mobile tourism” solutions either represent of-the-shelf applications with rigidly defined content or involve portable devices with networking capabilities that access tourist content with the requirement of constant airtime, i.e., continuous wireless network coverage. This paper presents the design and implementation issues of a 'mobile tourism' research prototype, which brings together the main assets of the two aforementioned approaches. Namely, it enables the creation of portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences."

"Technology has changed the way in which people tell their stories. This paper introduces digital storytelling and looks at why the mobile is an ideal platform for creating digital stories. The iterative design approach chosen for our Mobile Digital Storytelling system is discussed. Results of a final experiment, comparing our system to an existing mobile system that supports digital storytelling, are presented, which suggest that our system has met its design goals of providing an effective and efficient user interface. Qualitative insights from user evaluations show that mobile digital storytelling has a future."

"This article describes an investigation in location-based mobile storytelling entitled Tracking Agama. Using
a combination of SMS messaging, voice calls, and web log entries, Tracking Agama leads its participants
on a narrative-based exploration of Los Angeles, in pursuit of a fabled urban researcher, “Agama.” Participants use a bit of detective work to discover the keywords allowing access to Agama’s voice-activated
and phone-accessible audio diary entries; send and receive SMS messages from Agama and his assistant;
and receive calls from the virtual characters."

"In the last decade there has been a noticeable growth in the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies for reconstructing cultural heritage sites. However, many of these virtual reconstructions evidence little of sites’ social histories. Narrating the Past is a research project that aims to re-address this issue by investigating methods for embedding social histories within cultural heritage sites and by creating narrative based virtual environments (VEs) within them. The project aims to enhance the visitor’s knowledge and understanding by developing a navigable 3D story space, in which participants are immersed. This has the potential to create a malleable virtual environment allowing the visitor to configure their own narrative paths."

2008

"The ubiquity of camera phones provides a convenient platform to develop immersive mixed-reality games. In this paper we introduce such a game which is loosely based on the popular card game 'Memory,' where players are asked to match a pair of identical cards among a set of overturned cards by revealing only two cards at a time. In our game, the players are asked to match a 'physical card,' which is an image of a scene in the real world, to a 'digital card,' which corresponds to a scene in a virtual world. The objective is to convey a mixed-reality sensation. Cards are matched with a scene identification engine which consists of multiple classifiers trained on previously collected images. We present our comprehensive overall game design, as well as implementation details and results. Additionally, we also describe how we constructed our scene identification engine and its performance."

"Hybrid reality games (HRGs) employ mobile technologies equipped with Internet access and location awareness to create a multiuser game space that occurs simultaneously in physical, digital, and represented spaces as denoted by the player's mobility. This essay analyzes and compares two HRGs: "I Like Frank" and "Day of the Figurines." The goal is to understand games and play as activities intrinsically and inseparably connected to our physical spaces and to our daily lives by focusing on the interconnection between play and ordinary life, game community, and player identity. The essay also interrogates how these games reconfigure and reflect current concepts of surveillance, community and anonymity in city spaces. The development of these concepts expands current research about how new Internet-connected mobile communication technologies change our experience of physical spaces by adding to them imaginary playful layers that influence player mobility through the city and promote singular types of interactions among physical, digital and represented spaces. Our analysis considers the intertwined and complex consequences of HRGs and other locative media, illustrating how such media can both normalize and provide modes of resistance to certain power relationships."

"Location-aware technology and Internet connectivity embedded in mobile phones allow users to navigate physical spaces and be connected to other users, bringing many activities formerly performed "online" to physical hybrid spaces. Among such activities are location-based mobile games (LBMGs), which use urban spaces as the game scenario. This article is a case study of Alien Revolt (2005-2007), the first Brazilian LBMG, released in 2005 by the company Mind Corporation and the operator Oi in Rio de Janeiro. The game uses Java-enabled cell phones equipped with location awareness to transform the city into a battlefield. Following much of the Swedish game Botfighters' (2001-2005) idea, the first LBMG, Alien Revolt's goal involves virtually shooting other players within a specific radius in the city space. Alien Revolt exemplifies how cell phones strengthen users' connections to physical space, because they are used as collective communication devices, rather than personal private technologies. Moreover, when used for location-based activities, the cell phone plays the role of a location aware technology, rather than a mobile telephone used for two-way voice communication."

"The landscape of Internet mapping technologies has changed dramatically since 2005. New techniques are being used and new terms have been invented and entered the lexicon such as: mash-ups, crowdsourcing, neogeography and geostack. A whole range of websites and communities from the commercial Google Maps to the grassroots OpenStreetMap, and applications such as Platial, also have emerged. In their totality, these new applications represent a step change in the evolution of the area of Internet geographic applications (which some have termed the GeoWeb). The nature of this change warrants an explanation and an overview, as it has implications both for geographers and the public notion of Geography. This article provides a critical review of this newly emerging landscape, starting with an introduction to the concepts, technologies and structures that have emerged over the short period of intense innovation. It introduces the non-technical reader to them, suggests reasons for the neologism, explains the terminology, and provides a perspective on the current trends. Case studies are used to demonstrate this Web Mapping 2.0 era, and differentiate it from the previous generation of Internet mapping. Finally, the implications of these new techniques and the challenges they pose to geographic information science, geography and society at large are considered."

"In 2002, Jeremy Hight was involved in the project 34 North 118 West, one of the seminal works of what became known as locative media. He also wrote one of the seminal texts of the field, Narrative Archaeology. Here he discusses the process of conceptualizing and making the work and how it has fueled his latest projects with locative narratives."

"The aim of this article is to test how different narrative structures work in mobile video storytelling applications for creative arts. Especially, we are interested in stories made with the mobile phone and for the mobile phone i.e. they are supposed to be viewed on the mobile phone. In addition, we present a new mobile social video service and demo platform MoViE that enables users to create mobile narrations and stories using narrative structures. Hypothesis is that it is possible to create a dramaturgically intensive and coherent story from various short mobile videos composed by several authors if only there is a story generator that composes the certain structure and order to the combination of mobile videos. User of a mobile phone with video camera works as an author, and several authors could produce a common narrative with one storyline that is composed by automatic story generator. In the empirical part of the article we apply a narrative structure based on jazz music as a matrix for the story generator and analyze the creation process of video clips. In this study, we use ethnomethodology as our research framework."

"With its widespread use and its features and functions such as mobility, reachability, localization, and personalization, mobile phone technology offers a great potential in learning environments. With this consideration, our first and foremost aim in this study has been to make use of this profound interest and potential, and contribute to the efforts to enhance existing educational practices, particularly in the developing regions of the world. Therefore, we developed instructional materials to be delivered through mobile phones operated in second generation GSM technology in order to improve English language learners' vocabulary acquisition. The multimedia messages in this study allowed students to see the definitions of words, example sentences, related visual representations, and pronunciations. After students finished reading multimedia messages, interactive short message service (SMS) quizzes for testing their learning were sent. This paper suggests some important points to consider while creating MMS content and a SMS quiz system for educational purposes."

"Tourism provides over six percent of the world's gross domestic product. As a result, there have been many efforts to use technology to improve the tourist's experience via mobile tour guide systems. One key bottleneck in such location-based systems is content development; existing systems either provide trivial information at a global scale or present quality narratives but at an extremely local scale. The primary reason for this dichotomy is that, although good narrative content is more educationally effective (and more entertaining) than a stream of simple, disconnected facts, it is time-intensive and expensive to develop. However, the WikEar system uses narrative theory-informed data mining methodologies in an effort to produce high-quality narrative content for any location on Earth. It allows tourists to interact with these narratives using their camera-enabled cell phones and an innovative interface designed around a magic lens and paper map metaphor. In this paper, we describe a first evaluation of these narratives and the WikEar interface, which reported promising, but not conclusive, results. We also present ideas for future work that will use this feedback to improve the narratives."

"This study draws on the uses and gratifications framework to examine expanded use of a hybrid medium—the mobile phone—for mass communications and entertainment. Results of a telephone survey of 208 users show different motivations predict diverse uses of the mobile phone. Instrumental use motives drive the use of the mobile phone for news-seeking and Web-surfing. Further, the motive of pass time is significantly linked to playing video games via the mobile phone. In addition, the high-tech mobile phone enabled users to be more active: the more intensively people use mobile phones for voice calls, the more likely they will be to use mobile data services. Thus, the hybrid mobile phone bridges interpersonal and mass communication. Finally, younger users are more likely to use mobile phones for getting news and entertainment. Implications for the industry and recommendations for future research are discussed."

"AR promises to
transform the way we perceive our world,
much as hyperlinks and browsers have
already begun to change the way we read. Today we can click on hyperlinks in text to open new vistas of print, audio, and video media. A decade from now—if the technical problems can be solved—we will be able to use marked objects in our physical environment to guide us through rich, vivid, and gripping worlds of
historical information and experience."

"Mobile phones have the potential of becoming a future platform for personal museum guidance. They enable full multimedia presentations and—assuming that the visitors are using their own devices—will significantly reduce acquisition and maintenance costs for museum operators. However, several technological challenges
must be mastered before this concept is successful. One is the question of how individual museum objects can be intuitively identified before presenting corresponding information."

"Day of the Figurines (DoF) is a pervasive game for mobile phones that uses text messaging. DoF is driven by a strong scripted narrative that is combined with various interactive elements to create a shared experience. It is also a slow game, unfolding over twenty four days of its players’ lives, requiring them to send and receive only a few messages each day. Our experience of staging multiple performances of DoF to more than seven hundred players revealed key issues concerning the design and experience of time in such a pervasive game. Most players engaged episodically, raising issues of how to manage reengagement with the game and sustain social relationships. Our experience has led us to propose a framework for how to design time in shared interactive narratives in which five distinct layers of time – story time, plot time, schedule time, interaction time and perceived time – are mapped onto one another."

"To fully appreciate the opportunities provided by interactive and ubiquitous multimedia to record and share experiences, we report on an ethnographic investigation on the settings and nature of human memory and experience at a large-scale event. We studied two groups of spectators at a FIA World Rally Championship in Finland, both equipped with multimedia mobile phones. Our analysis of the organization of experience-related activities in the mass event focuses on the active role of technology-mediated memories in constructing experiences. Continuity, reflexivity with regard to the Self and the group, maintaining and re-creating group identity, protagonism and active spectatorship were important social aspects of the experience and were directly reflected in how multimedia was used. Particularly, we witnessed multimedia-mediated forms of expression, such as staging, competition, storytelling, joking, communicating presence, and portraying others; and the motivation for these stemmed from the engaging, processual, and shared nature of experience. Moreover, we observed how temporality and spatiality provided a platform for constructing experiences. The analysis advocates applications that not only store or capture human experience for sharing or later use but also actively participates in the very construction of experience. The approach conveys several valuable design implications."

"Storytelling capabilities are vital aspect(s) of a tour guide. In this paper, we present a mobile tour guide that emulates a real guide’s behaviour by presenting stories based on the user’s interests, its own interests, its belief and its current memory activation. This research moves away from the concept of a guide that recites facts about places or events towards a guide that utilises improvisational storytelling techniques. Contrasting views and personality are achieved with an inclusion of emotional memories containing the guide’s ideology and its past experiences."

"Auditory forms of nonpersonal communication have rarely been evaluated in informal settings like parks and museums. This study evaluated the effect of an interpretive
audio tour on visitor knowledge and social behavior at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. A
cross-sectional pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design compared the responses of audio
tour users (n=123) and nonusers (n=131) on several knowledge questions. Observations
(n=700) conducted at seven sites within the caverns documented sign reading, time spent
listening to the audio, within group conversation, and other social behaviors for a different sample of visitors. Pretested tour users and nonusers did not differ in visitor characteristics
knowledge, or attitude variables, suggesting the two populations were similar. On a 12-item knowledge quiz, tour users’ scores increased from 5.7 to 10.3, and nonusers’ scores
increased from 6.2 to 8.4. Most visitors were able to identify some of the park’s major
messages when presented with a multiple-choice question, but more audio users than
nonusers identified resource preservation as a primary message in an open-ended question."

"The widespread use of sophisticated mobile computing devices has set the stage for a renaissance in audio only entertainment. Traditional visual games are already used widely in cellular phones and similar devices. A significant limitation is the small display size. In contrast, audio only games on suitable mobile hardware need not degrade due to the smaller form factor. This makes audio only games an attractive alternative to visual games. We describe a framework for authoring interactive narrative-based audio only games set in 3D virtual environments. Despite the novelty in audio only gaming, our approach builds on a foundation of several years of research into audio only applications for sight impaired users, augmented reality systems and human–computer interaction studies. In comparison to attempts to provide a realistic user interface, we argue a simple interface enhances both immersion and entertainment value, serendipitously making audio only games practical for mobile computing. Novel features of our system include real-time gameplay and multi-player support. We also describe our software architecture, the current implementation of which uses low-cost existing PC-based hardware and software. In addition, we describe our first game, Dragon’s Roar."

2006

"Location appears to be one of the most important aspects of context in mobile communication. It is a complex piece of information involving several levels of detail. Location intertwines with other relevant aspects of context: the parties’ present activity, relative time and identities. The analysis of mobile conversations provides insights into the functions of “location” for mobile users. Most mobile calls involve a sequence in which location is reported. Location is made relevant by the parties’ activities. Location telling takes place in five different activity contexts during mobile calls. Location may be an index of interactional availability, a precursor for mutual activity, part of an ongoing activity, or it may bear emergent relevance for the activity or be presented as a social fact. Typically, joint activities make relevant spatio-temporal location such as distance in minutes from the meeting point via the vehicle used. For users, location does not appear to be relevant in purely geographical terms."

"The aim of this paper is to present a pilot mobile technology walking tour created in Venice, Italy within the context of creative tourism. The paper will focus primarily on the workings and user studies of the History Unwired (HU, see http://web.mit.edu/frontiers) project in Venice, Italy and pull in some authenticity research and other projects related to mobile technology in the tourism sector. From the outset, we recognize the potential incompatibility between the natural, palpable beauty of Venice and cutting edge mobile technology. We examine mobile media as a means of creating interactions between tourists and locals and as a means of activiting travelers as co-producers of travel experiences. This paper is being written at a time in which mobile technology content development is in its infancy, and bound to evolve in many directions, especially in the tourism industry."

"Mobile phones and PDAs are converging into mobile lifestyle devices that offer a wide range
of applications to end users. Many of these applications will have the ability to adapt themselves to the user’s situation, commonly referred to as context awareness. We argue that an infrastructure is needed to enable wide deployment of context-aware applications. A major benefit is interoperability between heterogeneous context
sources and applications in a privacy-sensitive
way."

2005

"Emerging technologies such as location-awareness devices have the potential to significantly impact users' social coordination, particularly while rendezvousing. It is important that we explore how new technologies influence social behaviours and communication in order to realize their full potential. This paper presents a field study investigating the use of mobile location-aware devices for rendezvous activities. Participants took part in one of three mobile device conditions (a mobile phone, a location-aware handheld, or both a mobile phone and a location-aware handheld) and completed three rendezvousing scenarios. The results reveal key differences in communication patterns between the mediums, as well as the potential strengths and limitations of location-aware devices for social coordination. The paper concludes with a discussion of relevant design issues drawn from observations gathered during the field study."

2004

"Location awareness is a key ingredient to many applications of mobile devices. Devices with the ability to determine their own position in space can retrieve, filter, or present information depending on this position. There are, however, different ways to look at this situation resulting in different distributions of computational resources. A strongly simplified description model will be introduced and a number of existing systems, from both research and industry, will be analyzed according to this model. With a view to scalability in ubiquitous computing worlds, we will examine the tradeoffs with respect to putting more computational effort and design wits into the environment and infrastructure or into the actual mobile device. Some of the ideas presented here were discussed in a paper at the first workshop on artificial intelligence (AI) in mobile devices."

"At the core of invisible computing is context awareness, the concept of sensing and reacting to dynamic environments and activities. Location is a crucial component of context, and much research in the past decade has focused on location-sensing technologies, location-aware application support, and location-based applications. With numerous factors driving deployment of sensing technologies, location-aware computing may soon become a part of everyday life."

"Nowadays, mobile computing and communication devices provide access to information from nearly anywhere, and many of these devices know where they are. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission requires that 95 percent of mobile phones must be able to determine their location within 50 to 300 meters by the end of 2005, and that wireless carriers must make this information available to emergency call responders. Much current research focuses on using location awareness to provide information about a user's surroundings. It is believed that geographic information can be personalized based on its relevance to the user, with appropriate descriptions or granularity to deliver valuable location-aware services. To demonstrate the practicality of this approach, several prototype applications are implemented in mobile phones that combine location awareness with communication technology."

2003

"We describe the several possibilities of using storytelling in an Augmented Reality Environment to support the collaborative experience of the users in those environments. We start with the motivation of a lack of storytelling and experience in Collaborative Virtual Environments. As an implication of the need for such experiences, we give a general definition of Interactive Storytelling and offer some insights on the difference between Interactive Stories and Games. We introduce our approach to Interactive Storytelling as a combination of Audience Participatory Theatre and a morphological approach to storytelling in Augmented Reality Environments. An overview of the technical development of the approach is followed by a project description, using the stated approach to verify the useful application of the approach in regard to collaborative user experiences."

"The project '34 North 118 West' utilizes technology and the physical navigation of a city simultaneously to forge a new construct. The narrative is embedded in the city itself as well as the city is read. The story world becomes one of juxtaposition, of overlap, of layers appearing and falling away. Place becomes a multi-tiered and malleable concept beyond that of setting and detail to establish a fictive place, a narrative world. The effect is a text and sound based virtual reality, a non passive movement, a being in two places at once with eyes open."

"Researchers and practitioners working on story-based experiences in virtual environments often make two assumptions. One assumption is that, to be compelling, such experiences must enable the user to make significant choices that alter the outcome of the story. Another is that virtual environments constitute a revolutionary new medium, and therefore that the techniques of earlier media, such as film and stage production, are no longer relevant. In designing story-based experiences in augmented reality, we have come to question these two assumptions. Three Angry Men, based on the teleplay and movie Twelve Angry Men, is an example of an augmented reality, dramatic experience with a fixed plot but multiple points of view. "

"Advances in sensing and tracking technology enable location-based applications but they also create significant privacy risks. Anonymity can provide a high degree of privacy, save service users from dealing with service providers’ privacy policies, and reduce the service providers’ requirements for safeguarding private information. However, guaranteeing anonymous usage of location-based services requires that the precise location information transmitted by a user cannot be easily used to re-identify the subject. This paper presents a middleware architecture and algorithms that can be used by a centralized location broker service. The adaptive algorithms adjust the resolution of location information along spatial or temporal dimensions to meet specified anonymity constraints based on the entities who may be using location services within a given area. Using a model based on automotive traffic counts and cartographic material, we estimate the realistically expected spatial resolution for different anonymity constraints. The median resolution generated by our algorithms is 125 meters. Thus, anonymous location-based requests for urban areas would have the same accuracy currently needed for E-911 services; this would provide sufficient resolution for wayfinding, automated bus routing services and similar location-dependent services."

2001

"Alice’s Adventures in New Media is an Augmented Reality (AR) experience based on A Mad Tea Party, a
chapter from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The user assumes the role of Alice and
sits at the tea party with three interactive characters: the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and the March Hare.
The video-based characters are presented through a head-mounted display, and appear to be seated at the
same physical table as the user. As a developing medium, AR has yet to establish itself as a narrative form. By comparing the unique characteristics of AR with established media, the project explores AR as a storytelling medium. Innovations include the refashioning of older media (such as film) for the development of an AR narrative, the use of simple procedural characters to create an immersive interactive experience, and the development of tools that enable the production of AR experiences."

"The extent of horizontal coverage of LBS has virtually covered all the walks of life from selecting the
restaurants to emergency services to aid in navigation Location Based Service or LBS, is the ability to find the geographical location of the mobile device and provide services based on this location information. For an example a person at shopping mall calls for the nearest restaurant with economy budget, he needs only names and addresses of those restaurants which are within his reach, say within one sq.km., out of the database of say 2000 restaurants in the city spread over 1600 sq.km.
The foundation stone of Location Based Services was laid by the Federal Communications Commission
of US (www.fcc.gov) ruling which required the network operators to provide emergency services by locating the user of the mobile device within 125 metres. It required wireless network operators to supply public emergency services with the caller’s location and callback phone number. This lastened the emergence of new and dynamic field called LBS, where the service was based on the geographical location of the calling device. Further, the developments in the field of Positioning Systems, Communications and GIS, fueled the imagination of the industry people with regards to the LBS. This ability to provide the user a customised service depending upon his geographical location could be used by telecommunication companies to restaurant owners. In the days to come, the LBS will be benefiting both the consumers and network operators. While the consumers will have greater personal safety, more personalised features and increased communication convenience, the network operators will address discrete market segments based on the different service portfolios."

More about the journals

College Composition and Communication publishes research and scholarship in rhetoric and composition studies that supports college teachers in reflecting on and improving their practices in teaching writing and that reflects the most current scholarship and theory in the field.

The refereed online companion to "Computers and Composition: An International Journal," now in its 26th year and currently published by Elsevier. "Our goal is to be a significant online resource for scholar-teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy in both virtual and face-to-face forums."

First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peer–reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, First Monday has published 1,000 papers in 158 issues; these papers were written by 1,269 different authors. In addition, eight special issues have appeared.

IEEE is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology. The IEEE name was originally an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Today, the organization's scope of interest has expanded into so many related fields, that it is simply referred to by the letters I-E-E-E (pronounced Eye-triple-E).

In a turbulent world, culture and tourism provide two of the most fascinating aspects of human life. Creativity, imagination, brilliant colours, music, sounds, artifacts, spectacular places are becoming the required connectors for humanity. In a global perspective, the new capacities of emerging technologies, such as pervasive and ubiquitous computing, semantic knowledge portals, broadband and satellite networks, Web 2.0 and semantic web, open source software, set new tools, define new horizons for human creativity and connectivity. In the digital world of the knowledge society, the development of infrastructures for the provision of services to citizens for access to cultural content and tourism services requires a multifold analysis of social, business, and technological factors. It seems that unfortunately there is a significant gap in the performance of current approaches and a key absence of scholar publications that will provide a fruitful dialogue.

A web-based, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on social science research about computer-mediated communication via the Internet, the World Wide Web and wireless technologies. Within that general purview, the journal is broadly interdisciplinary, publishing work by scholars in communication, business, education, political science, sociology, media studies, information science and other disciplines.

A refereed open-access online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology and pedagogy. Examines digital and multimodal composing practices, promoting work that enacts its scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media.

Topics are related to technology in English Studies fields (e.g., rhetoric, composition, technical and professional communication, education, creative writing, language and literature) and similar fields such as media studies, informatics, arts technology and others. Besides scholarly webtexts, Kairos publishes teaching-with-technology narratives, reviews of print and digital media, extended interviews with leading scholars, interactive exchanges, "letters" to the editors, and news and announcements of interest.

"Brings together a comprehensive collection of research articles from international experts on the design, evaluation, and use of innovative handheld, mobile, and wearable technologies. This journal will also consider issues associated with the social and/or organizational impacts of such technologies. Emerging theories, methods, and interaction designs are included and complemented with case studies, which demonstrate the practical application of these new ideas."

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing publishes peer-reviewed international research on handheld, wearable and mobile information devices and the pervasive communications infrastructure that supports them to enable the seamless integration of technology and people in their everyday lives. The journal carries compellingly-written, timely and accessible contributions that illuminate the technological, social and design challenges of personal and ubiquitous computing technologies. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing is an essential resource for researchers and educators who wish to understand the implications of ubiquitous computing.

A scholarly interdisciplinary journal of rhetoric, publishes in all areas of rhetoric and writing and provides a professional forum for its readers to consider and discuss current topics and issues. The journal publishes manuscripts that explore the breadth and depth of the discipline, including history, theory, writing, praxis, philosophy, professional writing, rhetorical criticism, cultural studies, multiple literacies, technology, literature, public address, graduate education, and professional issues.

The official journal of the Rhetoric Society of America, features original articles on all areas of rhetorical studies including theory, history, criticism, and pedagogy. The journal addresses an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students of rhetorics who work in communication studies, English studies, philosophy, politics and other allied fields.

Technical Communication, the Society’s journal, publishes articles about the practical application of technical communication theory and serves as a common arena for discussion by practitioners. Technical Communication includes both quantitative and qualitative research while showcasing the work of some of the field’s most noteworthy writers. Among its most popular features are the helpful book reviews. Technical Communication is published quarterly and is free with membership.

A refereed journal published four times per year with support from Taylor and Francis, the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), and the Texas Tech University English department. TCQ publishes research focused on technical communication in academic, scientific, technical, business, governmental, and related organizational or social contexts. Articles published in TCQ combine theoretical and practical perspectives. All articles have a sound basis in theory, use accessible examples and illustrations, and include implications for teaching, research, or practice in technical communication. Articles cover a range of topics that include communication design, pedagogical approaches, the role of digital technologies, ethics, the rhetoric of workplaces or professions, the practices of publication management, dialogue between academics and practitioners, research methods, and connections between social practices and organizational discourse.

The essential journal for research on the study of writing in all its symbolic forms, Written Communication has a broad and interdisciplinary view of what writing is, how writing gets done, and what writing does in the world. Written Communication's aims and scope encompass a wide range of topics, and its pages consistently provide readers with new research findings, new theoretical concepts, and new ways of understanding how writing is practiced in schools, workplaces, and communities.

"The Open Screen Project is an industry-wide initiative, led by Adobe with the participation of other industry leaders, with one clear vision: Enable consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere."

Consultants

"The digital revolution continues to break geographic, language and economic barriers, paving the way for a more fluid global economy. comScore is a catalyst in this process. With panelists in 170+ countries, comScore is the only digital media measurement company to offer global Internet audience estimates, including regional estimates for North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East-Africa."

"IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide. For more than 45 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company."

"From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, we are the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations."

Books, magazines, etc.

Books

By Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel M. Sutko. "The convergence of smartphones, GPS, the Internet, and social networks has given rise to a playful, educational, and social media known as location-based and hybrid reality games. The essays in this book investigate this new phenomenon and provide a broad overview of the emerging field of location-aware mobile games, highlighting critical, social scientific, and design approaches to these types of games, and drawing attention to the social and cultural implications of mobile technologies in contemporary society. With a comprehensive approach that includes theory, design, and education, this edited volume is one of the first scholarly works to engage the emerging area of multi-user location-based mobile games and hybrid reality games."

As described on Amazon.com: "This book gives anyone interested in mobile campaigns, both client-side and production-side, the knowledge to approach a mobile project with a cohesive strategy. The book presents a holistic view of the mobile ecosystem design/technology/marketing/business/build, with enough information to get one started with a project of this nature."

"The 2002 launch of the game Botfighters — a mobile version of Counter-Strike (Valve 2001) — marked the beginning of the invasion of urban space by real-time location-based mobile games. In Botfighters, a mobile device becomes a weapon, and the real urban landscape is transformed into a battlefield for a computer supported action adventure. To play the game, a player needs to visit the Botfighters website and create a robot warrior character, which, along with the mobile device, enables him to slip into the gamespace."

Under construction.

Public and government resources

At this point, application of location-awareness technology for civilian uses has been taking place primarily in industry and academia. But the U.S. government plays a major role in this effort with its maintenance of the GPS system and other critical infrastructure:

"The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a U.S. space-based radionavigation system that provides reliable positioning, navigation and timing services to civilian users on a continuous worldwide basis -- freely available to all. For anyone with a GPS receiver, the system will provide accurate location and time information for an unlimited number of people in all weather, day and night, anywhere in the world."

"The Center for Digital Storytelling is an international not-for-profit community arts organization rooted in the craft of personal storytelling. We assist youth and adults around the world in using media tools to share, record, and value stories from their lives, in ways that promote artistic expression, health and well being, and justice."

"The Center for Locative Media works with different cultural and educational communities to enable the creation, delivery and distribution of narrative histories of people and places using emerging and locative technologies.

To date, the Locative Media space has primarily been inhabited by artists. But as educators and amateur neo-geographers, we found a rich vein of place-based pedagogy to tap into. Here story was already married to place. As technologists we watched the tools become available to not only tag content to place, but to experience it in that place."

"Civic Tourism is an extension of and tool for other 'place-based' approaches, such as cultural heritage tourism, ecotourism, and geotourism. The mission of Civic Tourism is to "reframe" tourism's purpose – from an end to a means; that is, from an economic goal to a tool that can help the public enhance what they love about their place."

"Shorthand for locative journalism, LoJo is the name of a project launched by a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies. Through this project, we hope to create interactive and informative mobile experiences that push innovation in journalism."

"The next inevitable direction of evolution of eGovernment. It is about modernising the public sector organizations - hence the business processes, the work and the workers - using mobile technologies, applications and services. mGovernment is not only about technology but rather how technology revolutionise the public sector activities and how the society adopts these technologies."

"The GSMA Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM World Congress) combines the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry with a stimulating and insightful congress that brings together prominent leaders and personalities from mobile operators and equipment vendors, as well as Internet and entertainment professionals."

"The Open Mobile Consortium is a thriving community of mobile technologists and practitioners working to drive open source mobile solutions for more effective and efficient humanitarian relief and global social development. The Open Mobile Consortium aims to: Implement joint mobile solutions in the field. Maximize interoperability and data-sharing capabilities between our technologies. And streamline development, deployment, and use of open source mobile technologies."

Theories

Fisher wrote in 1984 that we inherently are narrative beings, with stories being one of the oldest and most universal forms of human communication. As storytellers by nature, we see everything, including abstract bits of information, as part of a larger narrative, making decisions and acting within this framework.

Under construction.

Research funding

Under construction.

What exactly are we talking about?

One of the most difficult aspects about getting started on this sort of research is figuring out what specifically this new medium is (or should be) called. I am building a glossary of related terms, too, but here are labels primarily being used right now for mobile storytelling that incorporates location-awareness technology:

Airrative

This is the term I created and started using in April 2009 to communicate my emphasis on the narrative core of the medium's structure -- the basic arcs or threads -- and to create separation from uses that are more like compilations of information or service journalism than stories. It's also meant to clarify that no human detritus is involved, even bar codes or RFID tags. The stories exist only in "the air," published and experienced through GPS and other location-awareness tools, such as Wi-Fi. I'm refining this idea and will publish more about it soon.

Ambient Storytelling

This use of location-based technology seems to put the emphasis on the ambiance around the storytelling waypoint.

Overlaps the real world with computer-generated information. This term -- reportedly coined by Boeing researcher Tom Caudell in 1990 -- seems to have inspired at least a couple of the early developers, Layar and Mobilizy, which created Wikitude. AR is also known as Metareality.

Pervasive Games

Only a tangential connection to our primary subject here, but often confused for it, transmedia storytelling is more about spreading a tale across the media spectrum, including mobile devices, without all of it contained in any one area. "The Matrix" movie, for example, included three mainstream films, an animated film, a video game, comic books and various other installments in other media, that combined to create the entire story. If you didn't experience the full collection across platforms, you would have difficulty understanding the significance of the scenes in the mainstream films. Also known as crossmedia or "enhanced" storytelling, the latter label of which might cause confusion with "augmented" reality.

Other terms being used:

Air-tagging, spatial computing, optical internet, physical gaming and synthetic environments. If I can find distinguishing traits of any of those, I'll move them into an individual category with an explanation.

Under construction.

Technical overview

"The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a U.S. space-based radionavigation system that provides reliable positioning, navigation and timing services to civilian users on a continuous worldwide basis ... in all weather, day and night.

The GPS is made up of three parts: satellites orbiting the Earth; control and monitoring stations on Earth and the GPS receivers owned by users. GPS satellites broadcast signals from space that are picked up and identified by GPS receivers. Each GPS receiver then provides three-dimensional location (latitude, longitude, and altitude), plus the time."

"The U.S. Air Force develops, maintains and operates the space and control segments.

The space segment consists of a nominal constellation of 24 operating satellites that transmit one-way signals that give the current GPS satellite position and time.

The control segment consists of worldwide monitor and control stations that maintain the satellites in their proper orbits through occasional command maneuvers and adjust the satellite clocks. It tracks the GPS satellites, uploads updated navigational data and maintains health and status of the satellite constellation."

Under construction.

Mobile Storytelling glossary / acronyms

GNSS -- Global Navigation Satellite Systems, the generic term for systems that allow geo-spatial positioning anywhere in the world, including altitude, latitude and longitude, which can be transmitted to small, hand-held devices.

GPS -- Global Positioning System, a global navigation satellite system developed and operated by the United States, the only fully functioning such system in the world

SMS -- Short Message Service, the system that sends and receives text messages

Under construction.

Editor's notes, including contact information

A bit of background: This project began in May 2009 because I wanted to know more about mobile storytelling and location-awarenesstechnology and the potential in those for community engagement. Information surprisingly was hard to gather and understand as a whole. Bits and pieces could be picked up in various spots. Yet envisioning those fragments as a larger mosaic was much more difficult. So I started gluing them together, first on my blog, then, when that grew too large, arranging them all here. Much more work needs to be done. I am not sure if I will ever catch up. But I will keep trying.

My goal at first was to survey the field and share what I found here, not to make a comprehensive list of everything ever produced that refers to location-awareness technology or mobile storytelling. What I hope will grow in this place instead is a critical resource for anybody interested in this subject, presenting highlights and context as well as foundational material. I'm particularly interested in applications that take advantage of new technologies to create stories unlike anything we have ever seen before. Of those, I'm focused primarily on awareness of location and context, orientation and time, especially in relation to nonfiction stories. Please let me know about sources or sites or applications that you think are important, and I will add those, too (and give you a credit line). If you find something valuable to take with you, please share it with others. If you like this list, please let people know about it. If you want to take information unique to here, or in this general arrangement, please at least credit the site. Better yet, though, link to it. Thank you!

Sources are provided either through hyperlinks embedded in the text or direct notations. If you would like additional clarification on the roots of any piece of information posted here, send me the question, and I will look that up and add a note or hyperlink to the page to clarify. My goal is to create a fully transparent and explicitly sourced and open and helpful resource in this field that can grow with its development as well as input from others. I realize some of the categories are thin right now, painfully so in spots. I have a lot of information that still needs to be sorted and input. Again, this is just a start. But I hope it is a helpful one.